Thermal drift distortions in high-resolution raster scanning microscopy are widely observed and reported in the literature. Artifacts due to the thermal drifting are often present in these types of scans and caused by temperature gradients/changes which induce deformations via the thermal expansion coefficients. Temperature changes/gradients can be caused by opening/closing of the microscopy tool enclosure and electronic/mechanical heating of associated motors. These artifacts complicate the both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the scans.
The known methods for reducing these undesirable artifacts involve burdensome changes to the measurement hardware or time consuming manual modification of the collected image. Another method known in the art involves use of automatic drift elimination in probe microscope images based on techniques of counter-scanning and topography feature recognition as described in an article by R. V. Lapshin, Measurement Science and Technology, vol. 18, issue 3, pages 907-927, March 2007. However, this method generally requires multiple scans to be performed in opposite directions. Each of these required scans are expensive and time consuming to perform. As such, a method for correcting for thermal drift that addresses these shortcomings is needed.